


Swooping Is Good

by TheMoments (TBs_LMC)



Category: Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Not Bad, Post-DAO party, Rescue, Romantic Fluff, Zevran Is The Most Adorable Thing I Have Ever Seen, no matter what Alistair says, sketches received in the mail, swooping is good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:40:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28905771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TBs_LMC/pseuds/TheMoments
Summary: Zuleika Mahariel feels lonely as she finishes the good-byes with her former companions at the party celebrating the Blight's end, but luckily for her, the excitement isn't over yet.While this little story takes place post-game, it will slightly skew Awakening, hence the AU designation.
Relationships: Zevran Arainai/Female Mahariel, Zevran Arainai/Female Warden
Kudos: 3





	Swooping Is Good

**Author's Note:**

> This was a little tiny piece of fluff that just zapped into my brain and insisted I write it. Short, maybe a little cute, definitely adorable. :-P

Everyone seems so blasé about it. About saying good-bye. Wynne thinks she might do this, and Sten is going to do that. Shale is going to go here, Oghren’s going to go there and Alistair’s become king so he’s off and running in his new life as Anora’s husband.

Everybody wants to greet the Hero of Ferelden. She who should have died but lived, but for the agreement she’d wheedled Alistair into taking because he was hell-bent on being the one to die for the archdemon and she couldn’t deal with it, so she’d been convincing. An agreement that gave a witch the child of a king with the soul of an archdemon, all so neither of them had to die. And the thing was, she’d been quite willing to die but for the fact that Alistair would have none of it.

So now what? Her clan would probably welcome her back, but as a Grey Warden she couldn’t just return to Dalish life. She’d seen and done too much for that simplistic existence to be enough now.

“We are the Dalish: keepers of the lost lore, walkers of the lonely path. We are the last of the Elvhenan, and never again shall we submit.” She said the words quietly as she made her way through the partygoers, followed immediately by, “In War, Victory. In Peace, Vigilance. In Death, Sacrifice.” Zuleika Mahariel sighed.

She was now the keeper of the lost lore but not for the Dalish. She was the walker of the lonely path. The last of the active Grey Wardens, for Alistair would not be pounding paths with her to seek and destroy darkspawn given his new duties. And while it may have been true that she would never again submit, those parts of her that were Dalish seemed to melt away into the ethers even as she smiled at the guard that she was ready to face her adoring public.

They stepped outside of the palace and were, quite literally, mobbed. Thousands of commoners poured through the ring of soldiers that were meant to protect her, and the woman who had faced down a dragon whose single finger was about as big as her entire being felt something that wasn’t necessarily fear, just wondering whether or not she’d be able to get away simply because she was bone-deep exhausted.

When suddenly from nowhere came a loud, whooping cry of “Ha _ha_!” and Zuleika had barely enough time to register that the form barreling toward her via a rope that had originally been used to string lanterns and flags high above the streets, was the one and only Zevran Arainai.

She half-squealed as his arm came around her waist. His other hand held tightly to the rope as they hit the bottom of the downswing, and all four of their feet together worked to push away fanatics who wanted not just to touch her, apparently, but to rip any shred of clothing from her person that they could reach.

As they moved into the beginning of the upswing, she felt one of her boots being slid from her foot, the other one halfway so, and she yelped as she whipped around in Zevran’s arms, wrapped her own around his neck and buried her face in his hair, which had whipped happily loose from the just-so braiding he’d done for the celebration, coronation and blah-blah-blah affair that was mercifully finished.

She felt her stomach drop on the full upswing and in one smooth movement, Zev had twisted and landed them somewhere flat and sturdy. Only then did she see it was a balcony on the highest floor of a building quite some distance to the other side of the castle frontage where she’d nearly been mauled. She thought it might be the top of the servants’ quarters.

Zuleika was shaking. From fear, certainly not, but from fright, yes. The tiredness had taken its toll and it was all just too much in the space of a moment when she’d barely recovered from stabbing a dragon in the head after battling thousands upon thousands of darkspawn freaks. Never mind that she’d felled five ogres on her own somewhere in amongst all of that night’s harrowing experiences, and that had been only the night before last.

“Did you just swoop down from the sky and save me from people who love me so much they want to unintentionally kill me?” she asked in a shaky voice. She had to work hard to extricate herself from the locked hold she had on him, deathly afraid that doing so would plummet her right back down to where the mob had followed them and were currently screaming at the tops of the lungs upwards trying to get her to…what, jump so she could save them the trouble?

There was something very odd about _shemlen_ behavior, she decided…although half the masses appeared to be elves, so…there was something to be said for living in the forests after all, Zuleika concluded. These city folk were, on the whole, impossible to figure out…to say the least.

“Yes, that is a fair assessment of my recent activity. Swooping to rescue the most beautiful Grey Warden in all the land.”

“Then I challenge Alistair’s statement that swooping is bad. Swooping is good. If it’s being done by you. To me. To save my life. And all. You know.” Zuleika sighed and dropped her forehead to his collarbone, wholly unwilling to be awake and alive anymore today.

He kissed the top of her head, and some part of her melted completely. Not that he hadn’t caught her eye already. They’d been sleeping together for a couple of months, and through it all they seemed to have maintained a sort of professionalism-with-nighttime-pressure-release relationship, but right now she could imagine being nowhere else and with nobody else.

“Shall I spirit you away to safer climes?” he asked, his voice deep and rumbling, breath hot against her ear.

“Only if you promise not to just leave me there.”

Zevran pulled back and used his index finger beneath her chin to tip her face up to look at him. She fell into two pools of golden amber eyes and suddenly thought, that was where she wanted to be…and must have said it out loud, for he asked, “Where? Where do you want to be?”

“In your eyes,” she murmured.

And though it was doubtful he could actually hear her over the din from below, he obviously read her lips well enough that he smiled, moved his mouth to her ear again and said in that sultry, almost laughing voice that simply said _Zevran_ , “Promise you won’t get tired of me staring endlessly at your beauty?”

“Only if you don’t get tired of me, period.”

“It’s a deal,” he said, then stared into her eyes for a few moments before capturing her mouth and very quickly making it clear to anyone who could see them well enough from below that Zevran was quite publicly telling all of Denerim exactly who the Hero of Ferelden belonged to. And that he would let no one harm her ever again…their ignoramus screaming fan-selves included.

With that, Zevran released his warden, put his right hand around her waist, grabbed the lantern-and-flag rope with his left hand, barked, “Hold on!” with a smirk that made her heart race, and leapt up and _over_ the roof behind them, swooping down to the ground in the complete opposite direction of the castle, never to be seen in Denerim again.

* * *

Word made it back eventually to the King of Ferelden that a Dalish ceremony had seen two former Blight heroes wed, but that within a fortnight they had disappeared from the clan for good.

And when at last he was advised that two elves – one a Grey Warden – had made it to Vigil’s Keep, only to be met with an untenable situation, King Alistair knew that his fellow Grey Warden – and most likely her assassin husband – now had the straggling darkspawn situation well in hand.

Ten months later, he received as part of his daily missives a very good drawing on a piece of parchment. It showed an elf swinging on what appeared to be a vine, from what was obviously his very own castle to the low row of servants’ quarters some distance away. Clinging to the swinging elf was another one, this with longer hair and both with huge smiles on their faces. Written beneath the sketch was “ _Swooping is good!_ ”

The king’s laughter was heard all the way in the kitchens.


End file.
